Cortez-Masto Calls For Greater E-Cigarette Oversight

CARSON CITY, NV - Don't call it smoking; those in the E-Cigarette biz call it vaporing.

And if you take a look at the biz inside Sierra Smoke Shop, business is good.

Manager Randall Fox says he used to be a 3-pack-a-day smoker.

But when health problems arose, he decided on what he calls a safer way to take in nicotine---with the help of an E-Cigarette.

“It's about the fact that you aren't inhaling those 4,000 chemicals on the American Cancer Society website; you are inhaling one item,” says Fox.

With an initial investment of up to $100, a "vaper," as they are called, can buy an e-cigarette, batteries, liquid and flavored nicotine.

And it is nicotine.

Which is why Fox says there's a warning on the door.

Just like tobacco, they will not sell to minors.

But that's at Fox's direction.

“Because this is a new product, the first step is for the Feds to come in here, take a look at it, regulate it, study it, address the advertising, address the ingredients, and then put the perimeters in place that these companies have to follow for the protection of our children and adults,” says Catherine Cortez-Masto, Nevada's Attorney General.

Cortez-Masto, along with 39 other Attorneys General, is urging the FDA to pick up the pace and start regulating E-Cigarettes the way it regulates other tobacco.

And on this issue Cortez Masto and her colleagues have a strange ally.

“We formed an organization that has been lobbying different agencies to give us regulations,” says Fox.

Fox says FDA regulations would legitimize the industry and get the bad players out.

He says FDA standards would give customers a sense of security about their product as well.

And as far as what else would go with that regulation, like no commercials but taxes?

“Yes,” says Fox.

Fox says his industry has been accused of marketing to kids with flavored nicotine.

But he says the flavors appeal to adults.

He says it's much like flavored vodka, which accounts for 25% of the “Adult” market.

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